Defying Authority in Obedience to Authority: Milgram’s Experiment

Half a century ago, a junior faculty member at Yale University
undertook a notorious experiment familiar to anyone who has taken an
introductory psychology course. Stanley Milgram set up the experiment to find
out the extent to which people will obey authority. This was motivated, in
large measure, by the horrors that had taken place scarcely two decades earlier
in Nazi-occupied Europe, where large numbers of otherwise decent people were caught
up in an effort to eliminate entire categories of humanity.

In the experiment, two persons came into the laboratory. One of them,
designated the “teacher,” believed he would be taking part in a study of
learning and memory. The other person, designated the “learner,” was an actor
privy to the real aim of the experiment. The learner was brought into a room,
strapped into a chair, and attached to electrical wires. The teacher was put
before the console of a formidable looking machine which, he was told,
controlled the amount of electricity flowing through the wires into the body of
the learner. The teacher was to ask questions of the learner, and each time the
learner made an error, was instructed to administer successively higher doses
of electricity to him.

In reality, of course, no shocks were ever given or received. The
real test was to determine how far the subject/teacher would go in carrying out
orders, even when hearing the agonizing cries of the victim/learner at the end
of the wires. Would the subject break off the experiment, thereby defying
authority, because he believed he was being commanded to do something wrong? Or
would the subject, upon being assured by the white-coated experimenter that he
assumed full responsibility, continue to administer “shocks” even up to the
dangerous level of 450 volts?

Going into the experiment, Milgram had believed that virtually all
decent people would break it off early because it conflicted with their moral
convictions. However, to his dismay, this was not what happened in many, if not
most, cases. As Milgram himself put
it, “Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the
pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to
be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out. . . .” Milgram concluded
that, for people to be brought to the point of performing such an action, they
must first relinquish their autonomy and enter into what he calls an agentic state in which they see
themselves as no longer responsible for their own actions and as nothing more
than an agent for carrying out someone else’s instructions.

Some subjects did indeed end the experiment early. These, Milgram
concluded, had succeeded in breaking with authority and reasserting their
autonomy. But at least two of the subjects believed otherwise. The first of
these was an unnamed professor of Old Testament at a major divinity school, who
ended the experiment early for ethical reasons. Why? As he himself put it, “If
one had as one’s ultimate authority God, then it trivializes human authority.”
The second was a Reformed Christian immigrant from the Netherlands who had
lived through the occupation of his homeland during the war.

Although Milgram accurately recounted these two cases, he badly misfired
in assuming that the subjects had recovered their presumed “autonomy.” In
reality, autonomy--the capacity to act morally without reference to authority--
does not and cannot exist. Those defying authority always do so based on
another authority deemed superior to the first.

A properly functioning moral conscience is formed by a variety of
authoritative influences, including parental upbringing, teachers, churches,
workplaces, and peers. As Jonathan
Haidt so recently discovered, people do not reason autonomously when
confronted with moral dilemmas. Rather, they intuit the correct course of action
based on a combination of multiple influences shaping them from birth.

Yes, it may be necessary at times to break with specific authorities,
especially if they become abusive. However, the only effective way to do so is
not to reject authority per se, which
is ultimately impossible, but to recognize, as the first
Christians did, that we answer to another higher Authority whose standards
override all others.

Capital Commentary is a weekly current-affairs publication of the Center for Public Justice. Published since 1996, it is written to encourage the pursuit of justice. Commentaries do not necessarily represent an official position of the Center for Public Justice but are intended to help advance discussion.